Senegal

The Senegal Faculty Led Study Abroad Program will be based at WWU with three weeks in Senegal (and an optional fourth week for travel). Students will study and write about West African literature and other forms of cultural expression. They will also write creatively about their experiences.

Courses are cross listed as follows:

• ENG 333 cross listed with ENG 408
• ENG 335 cross listed with ENG 408
• ENG 337

Dakar is an urban city which is the location of WARC (West African Research Center) and Cheikh Anta Diop University and Cheikh Hamadou Kane University. We will work with Senegalese faculty and other local interlocutors from these institutions, which will involve travel within the city. Our lodging will be beachside, and the weather in Dakar at this time of year is comparable to Bellingham in August. Students often wear shorts and t-shirts. (Dress is typically casual for the duration of the program other than visits to holy sites that require appropriate attire.) In Dakar, students visit the Grand Marché, the African Renaissance Monument, the Black Civilization Museum, and other excursions to nearby sites, including Goree Island (which involves traveling by ferry). Significant free time is provided for students to perform assignments and explore on their own in the places we stay. African dance lessons are also provided. Young Senegalese people who serve as guides travel with the program. Students travel from Dakar to Touba, holy city of the Muridiyya, to tour the Murid zawiya and Grand Mosque, which is the burial site of the famous wali Amadou Bamba, as well as ask questions and interact with local Murid leaders. Students then travel to Saint Louis in the north, the former administrative center of the French colonial empire in West Africa. Saint Louis is architecturally akin to New Orleans in the U.S. and other French colonial sites of the 19th and 20th centuries. The weather in Saint Louis is like Dakar's. Students often swim and study poolside. (It has happened in previous programs that students are poolside when they receive emails from the university that classes in Bellingham have been cancelled due to snow.) However, it can also be hot, dry, and windy in Podor and Alawar in the Sahara Desert, on the Senegal River and national border of Mauritania, where students travel next. Generally, however, the weather is pleasant at this time of year, even in the Sahara. The program requires some days of long bus travel and walking in the sun. After the program’s trip to Alwaar, which is a rural village in the desert and birthplace of the Tijaniyya ShaykhAl Hajj Umar Tall, the program concludes in Saly, which is a beach town with a significant French population that visits and resides in Saly, much like Americans visit and reside in Hawaiian or Mexican beach towns in the winter. As part of the program, students study the ongoing impact of French colonization in the region and often have opportunities to interact with French people. Students lodge a short walk from the beach. It is not required that students speak French, but there are opportunities for students who want to practice their French to do so. Some students also learn to speak some Woolf during their visit. During stays in Saly and Saint Louis, students have the opportunity to visit animal and bird reserves.